Anger Management And State Supreme Court

As the Wisconsin Judicial Commission now looks to whether there are disciplinary sanctions to be recommended in light of the Prosser-Bradley Supreme Court confrontation, a productive step towards group reconciliation and the restoration of civility on the Court could be made if the observations as reported by the Journal Sentinel of Justice Patrick Crooks - - the one Justice who did not witness the confrontation - - were addressed in a supportive, non-punitive way:

Justice N. Patrick Crooks, the only justice not present at the June 13 altercation, told detectives he had observed blowups by Prosser going back more than a decade. In a June 29 interview, Crooks told detectives that during a meeting sometime around the fall of 1999, Prosser had called him a "viper" for not supporting Abrahamson's re-election campaign and then left the room, slamming the door hard enough to make the glass vibrate. Crooks said Prosser "explodes and storms out of a room" about three or four times a year.

Crooks also recounted to detectives a closed meeting of the justices on Feb. 10, 2010, in which Prosser called Abrahamson a "bitch" and said she would be "destroyed," an incident that Prosser later acknowledged. Crooks said that on Feb. 22, 2010, he and Bradley met with Brady, the courts human resources officer, and John Voelker, the director of state courts, "because they felt there was an escalation" in Prosser's aggression, the records said.